Supreme Court Bars Challenges to Partisan Gerrymandering

“The districting plans at issue here are highly partisan, by any measure,” he wrote. “The question is whether the courts below appropriately exercised judicial power when they found them unconstitutional as well.”

The answer, he wrote, is no, as courts lack the authority and competence to decide when politics has played too large a role in redistricting. “There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments,” the chief justice wrote, “let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable and politically neutral.”

“Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

In dissent, Justice Kagan said the court had abdicated one of its most crucial responsibilities.

“The only way to understand the majority’s opinion,” she wrote, “is as follows: In the face of grievous harm to democratic governance and flagrant infringements on individuals’ rights — in the face of escalating partisan manipulation whose compatibility with this nation’s values and law no one defends — the majority declines to provide any remedy. For the first time in this nation’s history, the majority declares that it can do nothing about an acknowledged constitutional violation because it has searched high and low and cannot find a workable legal standard to apply.”

Source: The New York Times

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